Dick Spotswood: Slamming housing foes as 'racist' is unfair

I'VE BEEN THINKING about Supervisor Steve Kinsey's comment to me that some of those who oppose high-density housing in Marin are racists.

First, a note regarding Kinsey's denial that he uttered the "r" word. He said it and it was made in reference to the flap over Plan Bay Area, the planning effort of regional governments to force high-density housing on sites theoretically near transit corridors. In retrospect Kinsey may politically regret the comment.

I don't tape phone conversations so it's up to readers to decide who is telling the truth. Nor do I speak with Kinsey "off the record."

When readers think about whether the supervisor uttered the slam, recall that Kinsey spoke at the protest rally before Citizen Marin's housing town hall. These protestors were carrying signs charging the sponsors of being "racists." That protest rally is what prompted me to call the supervisor for comment.

This brouhaha provides an opportunity to discuss this charge that others have made. Most middle-class folks find this discussion awkward, but it needs to be addressed.

Comments that Marinites are racists apparently derive from the fact that primarily white and Asian residents populate most of Marin's communities. This isn't racism. It's the simple fact that Americans buy homes where they can afford to do so.

There's a sizable Latino population in Novato and in San Rafael centered in the Canal neighborhood. Marin's black community is small. That's typical of California, where African Americans compose only 6.6 percent of the population.

It's these numbers that supposedly prove that liberal Marin is a hotbed of racism.

I am writing from Greenwich Village, a New York neighborhood that finds me each spring. The upscale West Village has demographics similar to Marin: 80.3 percent white, 11.5 percent Latino, 8.9 percent Asian and 4.4 percent African American. Compare its diversity to Novato. Does that make the Village's residents, almost universally politically liberals, racists?

Marin, like New York and San Francisco, is a collection of neighborhoods divided by income and ethnicity. The difference is that Marin's neighborhoods, as in most American suburban counties, are incorporated as cities that now come with specific housing mandates.

Why aren't the bureaucrats in Sacramento and Washington pushing for high-density, low-income housing in the Marina and Greenwich Village, or for that matter Beverly Hills, as they do in Marin?

Savvy San Franciscans and tough New Yorkers say "get outta here" to the politicians, having endured similar bouts of social engineering in the 1980s. The old liberal guilt trip no longer works in the big city.

There's no question that there's lingering racism in America, but it's hardly specific to Marin.